Is the Bad Hamlet just bad?: Reconsideration of Q1 Hamlet as the erformance Text

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Since A. W. Pollard invented term quarto, in Shakespeare's Folios and Quartos: A Study in Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays 1594-1685(1909), first quarto of Hamlet has been almost habitually called just as one. In fact, Q1 Hamlet has many flaws such as about half of length of more familiar second quarto and folio versions, uneven verbal texture and simpler characterization, etc. We can find, however, bad Hamlet is not so bad as it has been thought, if we read text closely and reconsider its value, in terms of performance and separately from other longer texts. Above all, radical abridgement of two hours' traffic, which Q1 Hamlet shows, must have been more suitable for stage production. As Kathleen Irace says, neatness of difference suggests this structural change might have been a deliberate theatrical alteration designed speed action(11). The running time of Q2 or F should be more than 4 hours, which is extraodinarily longer than 2 or 3 hours of usual productions in Elizabethan period. The time of 4 hours should be too long for audience, especially for groundlings who should stand see performance. Q1 has not a few alterations of even famous lines and many spelling errors. One of most noticeable altered lines is to be or not be, there' point. But this is not just result of a reporter's flawed memory. Whereas that is problem should be spoken in way of internal soliloquy in which actor communes with himself, ay, there's point must be delivered directly audience as a Hamlet's own comment on line of 'to be or not be' because he enters, reading a book. Ay, there's point is supposed reflect Elizabethan acting style which tries contact with audience as often as possible. Many of spelling errors in Q1 are not quite different from common cases, usually found in most early modern texts. Additionally, like 'trapically' which is a pun on 'tropically,' some misspelled words are intentionally coined for more theatrical effect. We must also give attention fact Q1 keeps or more actively uses couplets which would verbally decorate last moments of important scenes and whole lines of play within a play in Hamlet. Q1's characters seem be still simpler than Q2's or F's, but they must be more theatrical. Q1's stage directions describe characters's action or dramatic situation most detailedly among three Hamlet texts's. Even though Q1's Hamlet doesn't speak the rest is at his last moment, very scene just after his death must be silent for a few seconds until Fortinbras and his soldiers appear on stage. Q1's silence hidden between lines might be able have voice when it has a space of stage. As Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor insist, Q1, if staged with speed, energy and talent, not only may provide us with evidence about nature of a performing text in Shakespeare's theatre, but may even, as theatre, be 'not bad, but excellent'(37).